CHAPTER FIVE
Twenty minutes later, Sophie had showered in the tiny shower she’d installed in the back dressing room and was in clean clothes. Her stomach was growling, but food was going to have to wait. She needed to check on things in the theater and see what the status was. There might be several big strapping men in there, but she knew that didn’t mean this was all going to be an easy fix. With the way her luck ran, it was going to be anything but.
Still, she felt warm when she thought about how Finn had rallied his friends and family to help. Sure, it was technically for Angie, but Sophie’s heart didn’t care when it flipped over in her chest as she remembered how triumphant he’d looked when the guys had showed up.
And then thinking about Finn, in any capacity, quickly turned the warmth she was feeling to hot.
The idea of a sex-only fling just wouldn’t leave her alone. It was a horrible idea, of course. She already liked him too much for that. From what she knew from Angie and what she’d already seen, liking him for only his body was not possible. No matter how spectacular that body was.
She pulled the door to the theater open, telling herself she was eager to get inside to see what was going on with her theater, her pride and joy. It had nothing to do with the big cop who was now up on a ladder, his shirt off, pounding a hammer against the drywall.
But damn. The sex-only-fling idea took root again immediately.
It was hot in the theater, and he wasn’t the only one without a shirt and with muscles bunching and skin glistening. He was, however, the only one she wanted to lick.
“Sophie!”
She started when Maya called to her and felt her whole body flush when Finn twisted to look over his shoulder at the sound of her name. She made herself focus on where Maya and Kiera were seated, in the third row in the section of seats closest to the wall the guys were working on. There was no way he’d caught her ogling him. And no way he could tell what she was thinking from clear across the theater. And yet she had the very weird impression that he did, in fact, know all the naughty things that were tripping through her mind.
“I swear to God, you should just sell tickets to this,” Maya said as Sophie took the seat next to her. Maya was holding a bag of microwave popcorn, munching away as she watched the men work.
“Why aren’t you helping?” Sophie asked.
“We don’t know what to do,” Maya said with a shrug. “I don’t know anything about drywall or electric stuff or whatever.”
“Me neither,” Kiera said. “I did some sweeping and picking stuff up, but they kept making it dirty again and I threw out some stuff they needed, so I just got out of the way.” Kiera reached for a handful of popcorn. “And I’m not complaining about just watching. Seriously. I know lots of people who would pay big for this. Mostly female people. But still.”
Sophie focused on the scene in front of her from the perspective of a woman who wasn’t obsessed with the forearms—and okay, the rest of—the hot cop on the ladder.
“Not a bad way to pass a couple of hours,” she had to agree. Hot men sweating, swinging tools around, and knocking things down. And laughing and talking and joking as they did it.
“This is like going to a Chippendales show but with tools and actual, you know, work,” Maya said.
“Have you been to a Chippendales show?” Kiera asked, her eyes on the stage. And not just on her hot boyfriend.
“I have. But it was a little…not this,” Maya said, gesturing toward the guys.
“Not this?” Sophie asked.
“It was choreographed, and the guys were oiled up and shaved, and they were kind of in-your-face.”
“Isn’t that what women like?” Kiera asked. “Abs and asses in their face?”
Maya laughed. “I guess. But this is real, you know?”
Sophie didn’t know about Kiera, but she knew. This was real alright. Very real. “They sure didn’t hesitate to take their shirts off, did they?” Sophie asked.
“It’s really hot in here,” Maya said. “I mean, literally.” She chuckled. “But there’s also a lot of testosterone in here.”
“I noticed,” Sophie muttered.
“So once one of them stripped down, the others had to,” Maya said.
“After Maya gave him a whistle, of course,” Kiera added with a grin.
“Oh, they love it. They’re firefighters. They love the you’re-my-hero stuff,” Maya said.
“Like world-renowned pediatricians?” Sophie asked, nudging Maya with her elbow.
Maya winked. “Alex is humble.”
“But he loves when you tell him he’s a big hero,” Sophie teased.
“Well, yeah. But I show my admiration in very special ways,” Maya said.
Sophie looked at her friend and felt her heart warm. Maya lit up from the inside when she talked about Alex. And Sophie was so happy for her. Everyone deserved that kind of love.
“Well, I don’t think the firefighters mind being half-naked and ogled,” Kiera said. “They do those calendars all the time, right?”
“I’ve bought one every year,” Maya said, tossing three kernels into the air and catching all of them in her mouth.
Sophie thought about the hot guys who didn’t mind being shirtless onstage. She couldn’t sell tickets to this. Could she? Well, no…but it was actually a brilliant idea. In theory, anyway. She couldn’t quite bring herself to exploit their kindness and hard work—and she was proud of resisting that, considering her lineage—but she couldn’t help that her wheels were spinning a bit. She needed money since Frank was taking half of the insurance payment, and she had no idea where it was going to come from. She couldn’t just dip into her savings for all of it. But if she could do some kind of fund-raiser…
The back door to the theater banged open, and Sophie pivoted in her seat. It seemed that the doors around here were banging and thumping a lot lately. Ever since Finn had showed up.
There had also been a lot of people here since he’d shown up, she thought, as several strolled down the middle aisle. A couple carried toolboxes, but one carried a huge portable CD player and the rest all had dishes, plastic bags, and cardboard boxes in hand.
“Hey, food’s here!” one of the guys from the stage yelled.
That got everyone’s attention, and all Sophie could do was sit back and watch as the newcomers—men and women, a handful of younger boys, and three teenage girls—seemed to take over the space. They set dishes and casserole pans, loaves of bread and cookies, and bottles of water and a case of beer on the edge of the stage. The girl carrying the CD player looked around and found an outlet, and soon country music filled the air.
“Dammit, Zoe, not country!” someone yelled at her.
She propped a hand on her hip. “Why not?”
“We need rock and roll.”
“Why do you need rock and roll?” Zoe asked, her ponytail swinging against her shoulder as she tipped her head.
“We’re knocking shit down. You can’t do that to country.”
“Not even Jason Aldean?” she asked.
“Jason Aldean is drinking music,” the guy said. “We’re using sledgehammers here. We need Guns N’ Roses.”
Sophie couldn’t help but nod. Guns N’ Roses was an excellent choice. If you didn’t have AC/DC or Joan Jett or Mötley Crüe. She didn’t even know who Jason Aldean was.
“So all country music is for drinking?” Zoe asked, grinning in spite of the fact that her music pick was being disparaged.
“Hell no,” the guy said, not even bothering to watch his mouth around the girl who couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Or the little boys who weren’t any older than ten or eleven. “A lot of country music is for fu—loving.” Ah, there, he’d caught himself.
Sophie laughed softly.
The girl rolled her eyes, clearly unfazed, and one of the guys called out, “A lot of rock music is for that too.”
Sophie couldn’t disagree with that either. AC/DC again. Def Leppard. The Rolling Stones
. They all made her list of great sex songs. And, as was becoming quite predictable, her eyes found Finn among the crowd of hot male bodies. He was looking at her too.
“So what do you listen to when you roll out to a fire?” Zoe asked.
The firefighter grinned. “Slippery When Wet.”
Zoe lifted a brow. “Bon Jovi?”
Sophie was impressed a girl her age would know Bon Jovi’s older stuff.
“Of course. We’re all livin’ on a prayer each time,” the guy said with a grin.
“Aw, you guys have love songs to work to together,” Zoe said.
“We’ve got each other, and that’s a lot,” another said, and all the guys laughed.
“That’s kind of lighthearted for going out to a fire, isn’t it?” Zoe asked.
“Yeah. And we do what we do so that the people affected by the fire can have more lighthearted times too,” Colin said.
Everyone just nodded to that, and Zoe gave Colin a big, sincere smile.
“What is this?” Maya leaned in to ask.
Sophie shook her head, making herself look at her friend. “Looks like Finn’s posse is even bigger than we thought.”
“And they have brownies,” Kiera said. “Huge frosted brownies.”
They did. Along with lettuce salad, what looked like macaroni salad, mixed fruit, and, amazingly enough, not just lasagna but what appeared to be some kind of chicken Alfredo casserole.
This wasn’t just people showing up with sandwiches and chips and delivery pizza the way Sophie sometimes did for the volunteers who worked on sets after hours at the theater. This was a full-on three-course dinner. For at least fifty people.
“I don’t remember the last time I saw this much food,” she murmured to Maya, as her stomach growled.
Maya grinned. “At a restaurant, maybe?”
Exactly. This wasn’t a normal family dinner. Then again, maybe it was. This had to be Angie and Finn’s family.
There was more laughing and joking as paper plates, plastic silverware, and napkins were pulled from bags and distributed. Zach pulled Kiera out of her seat to join him, and Maya got up to follow them.
“You coming?” she asked Sophie.
“Yeah. In a minute.” She just needed a second to observe before she dove in. She needed to let everything kind of sink in. The theater was never this…alive. She loved the players who had a passion for acting and for this theater in particular. She loved the work that went into building sets and making costumes and staging a show. She loved working on lighting and music. But this was different. And she knew exactly what the difference was. It was the same thing that Maya had mentioned that set these guys above the Chippendales dancers. This was real.
Sure, the work that went into making a show come to life was real. They hammered real pieces of wood together and painted and decorated with real paint and supplies. They really sewed fabrics together to make costumes. All of that was technically real. And the people involved got along and enjoyed it. They joked and laughed and worked hard too. But it was a side project, extracurricular to their real lives—jobs, families, friends. The work they did created imaginary worlds that were temporary and brought people together who didn’t spend time together outside the playhouse. There were regulars who knew one another well by now, but they still didn’t have relationships in which they could call one another dumbasses or tell another member of the cast to fuck off.
These people knew each other. This—all of this noise and commotion and all of these relationships—was their real life. They worked together, they socialized together, many of them were related to one another. The feeling of family and familiarity was thick in the room, and Sophie felt overwhelmed by it. As well as very, very tempted.
She had a group like this with Maya and Kiera and Rob and Ben, the guys next door. Their circle now also included Zach and Alex as well as Zach’s sister and even his parents at times, along with Alex’s daughter and her mom. Their group also sometimes included the people who worked at Maya’s martial arts studio. When they were in town, Kiera’s best guy friends and bosses, Pete and Dalton, were also there.
But none of them were Sophie’s.
They never made her feel left out or unwelcome, of course. She enjoyed them all and could depend on them. She considered them her makeshift family. But, maybe more than ever, she wanted to bring someone into the group who belonged to her, who was there because of her.
The guys loaded their plates, jostled for the brownies and cookies, kissed the cheeks of the women who’d brought the food, and acted as if eating lasagna on a theater stage with drywall dust and soot streaked on their faces and clothes was perfectly normal. Or at least no big deal.
“Hey.”
She looked over her shoulder, her heart in her throat. Finn was standing in the row behind her, two plates in hand.
“Hi.” She gave him a smile and wondered if it looked as wobbly as it felt.
He handed her a plate. “I didn’t know what you’d like.”
The paper plate was filled with a sample of everything offered. The smell of the tomato sauce, garlic, and oregano hit her, and her stomach rumbled happily.
“Any of it. All of it,” she said, reaching for the plate eagerly.
He chuckled as he handed it over, and that made her hungry too—a different hungry.
“Thanks,” she said, balancing the plate on her lap. “But you didn’t have to do that.”
“I wasn’t sure if you were still over here because you weren’t hungry or because all of these jerks scared you off, or what.”
He settled two seats to her right in the row behind her. She wished he’d sit closer but was also glad for the space. He made the normal-size seat look kid size, and she knew his knee would have been pressed against hers. Which would have been sweeter than the frosted brownie on her plate. And that was saying something. But why tempt herself? Finn’s big, hard knee—and the rest of him—was off the menu.
Sophie shifted in her seat, turning sideways and hooking a leg over the arm of the chair so she could look at him as they ate. She ran a finger through the chocolate frosting and lifted it to her mouth. It was rich and fudgy and perfect. And she might need fifteen more if she couldn’t indulge in Finn.
She heard him clear his throat, and she glanced up. His eyes were on her finger—and her mouth. That look on his face made everything in her clench. She sat up straighter. How long was this cleanup job going to take? She wasn’t sure how long she could deal with this heat between them.
“Not scared off,” she said, going back to what he’d said before about his family. “They’re just—”
“A lot.”
She smiled and nodded. “But in a good way.”
Finn looked over at his family and sighed. “Ninety percent of the time I’d agree.”
“Your mom says seventy-five percent.”
He grinned. “That’s because her house is the biggest and everyone congregates there. That means everyone can leave when they’ve had enough. Except her.”
Sophie laughed and then took a bite of pasta salad. It was the best pasta salad she’d ever had. Whether that was because it really was the best pasta salad ever, or because she just hadn’t had a lot of pasta salad in her life, or because she was feeling included in something big and warm and familial at the moment, Sophie wasn’t sure. But she was definitely feeling warm and included. And the pasta salad was amazing.
“I can’t believe you asked them to bring food.”
“Oh no,” Finn said quickly. “This is not totally my fault. I asked my brother to bring a sledgehammer. There was no mention of lasagna.”
“Ah, so I should be grateful to Colin?” she asked, taking a bite of said lasagna.
Finn’s eyebrows slammed together. “No.”
Was it strange that when he used that tone she could feel a tingle where his hand had been on her thigh the night before?
“Then who should I thank for the twenty shirtless men, the three-course dinner
, and Bon Jovi?”
The guys had all slipped their shirts back on, though a few of them hung unbuttoned, but she didn’t think that would last. And, okay, she was hoping it wouldn’t last. Finn was one of the guys wearing a T-shirt, so his six-pack and pecs were covered at the moment. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t close her eyes and conjure up the vision again in a heartbeat.
“You know how phone trees work?” he asked. “Where one person calls five people to give them news or ask for something, and those five people call five more and on and on?”
“Sure.”
“That’s what happens with my family.”
“That’s…efficient,” Sophie commented, feeling equally overwhelmed and fascinated by the idea.
“It’s scary,” Finn said. “I think about that first phone call really hard before making it. Because nothing’s ever private in this group.”
“But it’s nice,” Sophie decided. These people weren’t here to be in the way or cause trouble. They were here because they cared. One of them needed something, and the rest showed up.
“It’s loud.”
Well, it was that. She smiled. “But these aren’t all Kellys, right?” she asked. She knew Angie was very close to her husband’s family, even though he’d been gone for sixteen years, but Sophie also knew that Angie’s family, her four sisters and their families, were in Boston as well.
“Nope,” Finn said. “There are some Patricks and some Sullivans and some Derbys and some Hatches here too.”
Wow. That was a lot of names. And people. Sophie watched them all laughing and talking. They all mingled as if one big, happy family. They also touched a lot. There was back slapping and shoulder bumping and hugging. It seemed that no one had any personal space. Or that it wasn’t respected, anyway. And no one seemed to mind.
“You have that look on your face again,” Finn commented.
Totally His Page 8
